Faculty Research: Dr. Randy Lewis on Surveillance and Emotion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43vSXl5xhP4A few years ago, Dr. Randy Lewis received a Humanities Research Award from the College of Liberal Arts in support of research for his upcoming book, currently titled Surveillance of the Heart: Fear and Loathing in Fortress America. In this video, Dr. Lewis describes the specific research that this award supported, from visits to Walden Pond to churches in Colorado. Take a look!

Happy Holidays!

Hello, dear readers. As winter break is upon us, we'll be taking a hiatus from publishing until January 2014. Until then, we hope you have a restful, relaxing holiday season.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness.

All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fineness and purity are visible to the eye, and we would fain stay out long and late, that the gales may sigh through us, too, as through the leafless trees, and fit us for the winter - as if we hoped so to borrow some pure and steadfast virtue, which will stead us in all seasons.

Henry David Thoreau, "A Winter Walk"

Announcement: Happy Thanksgiving!

As faculty and students depart campus for the [long] weekend, we'd like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. We hope your holiday is peaceful and relaxing.

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual." - Henry David Thoreau

We'll be back next week with more content, so stay tuned! 

Happy Thanksgiving from AMS :: ATX!

To all of you, a very happy Thanksgiving from the AMS :: ATX team."The different characters of the trees appear better now, when their leaves, so to speak, are ripe, than at any other season; than in the winter, for instance, when they are little remarkable, and almost uniformly gray or brown, or in the spring and summer, when they are undistinguishably green.... It is with leaves as with fruits and woods, animals and men: when they are mature, their different characters appear." -Henry David Thoreau, "Autumn," September 30, 1851